Today, NY Times opinion writer Jane Coaston interviewed Gov. Cox about why his state has adopted these measures.

Jane Coaston: Why this legislation, and why now?

Gov. Spencer Cox: There’s a couple of reasons. Look, we’ve talked to mental health professionals across the state and across the country. We’ve looked extensively at the research. We’ve done our homework on this one. We’ve spent time with parents and children, all across the state, and there is a general consensus and acknowledgment that social media and access to these devices is causing harm. Significant harm.

If you look at the increased rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm since about 2012, across the board but especially with young women, we have just seen exponential increases in those mental health concerns. Again, the research is telling us over and over and over again that it is not just correlated, but it’s being caused, at least in part, by the social media platforms.

So we felt like we need to do something. If this was happening anywhere else, if this was childhood cancer or childhood car accidents, or if we had seen these significant changes anywhere else, we would, I think, all be losing our minds about this.

The second part of your question is, why now? And I think the better question is, why didn’t we do this four or five years ago? Now because it’s sooner than tomorrow.

All of this ties into something I’ve written about several times this year. There is pretty significant and undeniable evidence that teens, especially teen girls, are struggling with the issues that Gov. Cox raised. In February the CDC released research showing some pretty disturbing trends:

Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide — up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago — according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of 27 percent over two years and the first increase since the CDC began tracking it…

Almost 3 in 5 teenage girls reported feeling so persistently sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year that they stopped regular activities — a figure that was double the share of boys and the highest in a decade, CDC data showed.

The trends are undeniable but the exact cause is still the subject of much debate. Jonathan Haidt has been making the case that the best explanation based on the timeline for the recent surge in these problems is the ubiquity of smart phones among teens.

Nearly all researchers now agree that there are correlations between (crude measures of) time spent using social media and (crude self report measures of) mental health problems, but there is heated disagreement about the size and significance of these effects. Some researchers believe the correlations are in the ballpark of r = .04, and are of no practical significance; others find that the correlations are between r = .10 and r = .20, which is the size of many other public health threats.

The NY Times has also published stories suggesting a connection between social media use and certain apparent mental health issues:

Aidan’s tics erupted one day after school in early 2021, about a month after the long pandemic lockdown had ended. The 16-year-old convulsed while walking into the house, head snapping and arms swinging, sometimes letting out high-pitched whistles and whoops.

Aidan’s parents looked up from the living room couch with alarm. They had been worried about the teenager’s ratcheting anxiety — related to Covid, gender dysphoria, college applications, even hanging out with friends. But they were not prepared for this dramatic display.

“We watched this happen in front of our eyes,” Aidan’s mother, Rhonda, recently recalled. “It looked like Aidan was going crazy.”

They rushed Aidan to the emergency room, but doctors found nothing wrong. After calling a neurologist, the family learned that more than a dozen adolescents in Calgary had recently come down with similar spasms.

Over the next year, doctors across the world treated thousands of young people for sudden, explosive tics. Many of the patients had watched popular TikTok videos of teenagers claiming to have Tourette’s syndrome. A spate of alarming headlines about “TikTok tics” followed.

So there is some proof in some cases that social media is driving these things and Utah had decided there’s enough evidence to at least get parents involved.

Coaston: Clearly parents could do this without the state getting involved. What are parents not doing that necessitates the state acting in their stead, or augmenting parents?

Cox: We talked to parents, including parents who are in this space. Parents who are psychiatrists, parents who deal with this every day. And what they’re saying is “we need help.” Even the parents who are the most engaged are desperate for some help, because of the other cultural forces that are just pushing this and making it so very difficult to deal with.

Just a couple of examples, right? One is the ability to have phones turn off or have these social media platforms disengaged at certain hours during the night. That’s something that parents can override, but setting that as a standard and helping them to understand how important this is again from a scientific standpoint, that sleep at that age with developing brains and having that time off from 10:30 at night until 6:30 in the morning, that that can make such a huge difference.

…we’re not telling parents how to parent. The law empowers parents. It doesn’t tell parents what they have to do at all. Again, if they want their kids to be on social media at 4 in the morning, they have the ability to allow their kids to do that.

This strikes me as the right balance. The law doesn’t require parents to take away smart phones or to limit social media activity. Parents who don’t care about this issue can give permission for their child to do whatever they want. On the other hand, this does require that parents at least be involved in the decision, which seems like a good idea under the circumstances.

Regular readers know I’m often fond of the comments at the NY Times but not in this case. The top comment on this article is leftist whataboutism:

Before I even begin to comment on the social media aspect, I must point out the massive and obvious blind spot with this discussion in that we could swap out social media for firearm safety and we would be having roughly the same conversation.

Obviously a republican is not going to ever mention that but in the same breath will quote health professionals on the threat to children’s health and well being. The disconnect is astounding, but is at the same time willful.

I personally think that if we are even going to have this discussion that we remain consistent first. That would require acknowledging that of the above, and then reforming laws to better reflect our modern times. If a ”kid” can do certain things legally at a certain age, then they must be allowed to do other things as well, If they are not, then the restrictions have to be across the board.

The author of this comment apparently doesn’t realize that gun laws in Utah are already very similar to the social media laws just passed. No one under 18 can buy or possess a gun without the permission and consent of a parent. There are some exceptions including using a gun at a range or at a safety course or even on private property with the permission of the property owner and a parent. But in general it’s the same idea. People under 18 can’t do much without the involvement and permission of a parent. However, with the permission of a parent they can own and use a gun in certain settings. In short, the laws are basically consistent in not banning activity that could be harmful but in ensuring that parents are involved.

My own take is that Utah may be on the right track. At worst, this is one of those cases where the laboratories of democracy are going to experiment and see what happens. Gov. Cox says it will probably be two years before we know if this experiment was successful in reducing problems like self-harm and suicide. Obviously if it works other will want to emulate it.